Love L.A. Weather? Readers share 92 books like L.A. Weather...

I’m aware that all my recommendations are loaded with pretty big ideas about identity, exploitation, greed, and (hopefully) personal redemption. I love reading about this stuff, but it’s probably not surprising that I’ve been returning to this book every few years since I was a teenager. It’s my all-time favorite, and I’ve found over the decades, its meaning has grown with me.

When I returned to it most recently, I found a humbling reminder of personal impermanence. The way our lives, even in their greatest moments, will ultimately be forgotten. And a warning of what we can lose in the moment when we live either hypnotized by the promise of the future or embittered over the injustice of the past. 

As a nihilist, I can’t go past a book about the beauty and ultimate pointlessness of life. 

This novel, of two Nigerian families who are from incredibly different backgrounds and prospects, is in stark contrast to the previous book. It is rooted in the present, in the dual realities of life in modern-day Nigeria. 

I loved this novel for its twists of fate, the way storylines inevitably collide like two freight trains going in opposite directions on the same track, and just how deeply the cultural values surrounding marriage and family shine through—such as when a teenage girl counts the number of times in a week her family members mention marriage to her.

This is an incredible novel that provides an intimate look at a piece of history that many Americans know next to nothing about (embarrassingly, I was one of them before discovering this book). The prose was breathtaking, and certain sections had me in uncontrollable tears.

However, I didn’t just choose this novel because it’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching story of a Palestinian family broken by war (though it most certainly is). I had initially disliked the ending because it didn’t offer the closure I prefer from a novel’s final pages. But after reflecting, I realized that was the point.

Salt Houses showed me that not only do authors need to carefully consider what they include in their books—it’s also important to decide what needs to be left out, and why.

I love reading fiction that teaches while it entertains, and I have to say, I was completely unaware of this ancient regional conflict and the legendary sisters Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhi before picking up Bronze Drum. 

The sisters are depicted as opposites—one disciplined and wise, the other impulsive and emotional. They each seek to honor Vietnamese cultural traditions, which was under the oppressive rule of the Han Chinese at the time (circa 40 CE). When the sisters become leaders in a revolution against the Chinese empire, their sisterly dynamic shifts in ways that impact the future of their whole nation.

Believe it or not, this irreverently titled gem was recommended to me by a pastor.

Charlie LeDuff is no saint, but his sermons on racial unrest, politician-class hypocrisy, and the poisoned water of Flint, Michigan should evoke some Old Testament outrage in any red-blooded American.

LeDuff shrugs off the tired tropes and narratives for a God's-honest odyssey of the U.S. to document corrosions within our culture and society. I dig his style and, more critically, his clear-eyed examination of the problems average people are facing across the country.

Sh*tshow! is a fun and refreshing read, sure to help recharge the batteries of even our most cynical.

This is a memoir about being a writer—and failing. With scholarly rigor and tenderhearted sympathy, Specktor excavates the lives of artists forgotten (Carol Eastman, Eleanor Perry), underappreciated (Thomas McGuane, Hal Ashby), and notorious (Warren Zevon, Michael Cimino), while always circling back to his own benighted Hollywood upbringing, complete with a lovely tribute to his mother, a failed screenwriter. This is an angry, sad, but always somehow joyful book about not hitting it big, and I've never read anything quite like it.

This is a personal favourite as it’s the Ellroy novel that carries the biggest emotional punch. Although it didn’t match the sales of its predecessor The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere is a more accomplished novel. The setting is LA, 1950. A murder plot is interweaved with the politics of the Red Scare, and a Hollywood milieu at the height of the film noir age. This is the novel that proved Ellroy was a literary writer, and not just a genre one.

I absolutely loved this book. One of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read, it’s heartfelt and hilarious. After running his own bookshop in Seattle, Andrew Bloomfield moves to Hollywood to become a screenwriter and discovers a colony of feral cats living in his backyard. He was not a cat person. After witnessing one too many raccoon and coyote attacks and hungry, crying kittens, he and his two female housemates intervene and start caring for these wild yet vulnerable cats who transform his life. With his sharp wit and keen eye for detail, Bloomfield is a brilliant storyteller. I got completely caught up in the soap-opera dramas and death-defying moments of these cats, along with the heartaches and triumphs of rescuing them.

Elroy wrote many other books before he took on this epic noir crime novel (one in a quartet). He made his bones in writing, and it's evident in his skill level, story, and prose. Elroy excels in this novel (and the other three) in voice. And voice is the Big Kahuna in writing, it’s the everything in writing and Elroy has it in spades.

Another great addition to the above is the length (because you don’t want this book to ever end) and that it’s a historical novel that absolutely captures the time period and adds the historical nuance to all the characters.

Great writing on cities is rarer than it should be. The late Mike Davis, using Los Angeles as his muse, showed me—and so many others—new ways of thinking about cities through his vividly and passionately argued prose. Weaving together strands of architecture, urban history, social justice, and ecology, Davis has inspired me like no other author to examine cities critically, from unexpected perspectives and with a fierce point of view. Underlying his outrage at the injustices of the unravelling metropolis is a mordant sense of humor—making him an unbeatable guide as we all ride shotgun through desperate times.